The government has moved forward with a new sovereign data center for the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) in Karachi. The project has now entered the procurement phase. Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunications Shaza Fatima Khawaja shared the update in a written reply to the National Assembly. The project was approved under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) 2025-26.
The Karachi facility will mainly serve NTC’s South Region and government organizations operating there. NTC plans to expand the facility later based on demand from public-sector clients. The data center will provide local cloud infrastructure and basic AI services. It also aims to reduce Pakistan’s reliance on foreign cloud platforms and improve data security.
The facility will serve government organizations across Sindh and Balochistan. It will support services such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), disaster recovery, and business continuity.
NTC expects the regional center to reduce pressure on infrastructure in northern Pakistan. It should also improve the reliability and response times of critical e-governance platforms. The project supports the government’s Pakistan Cloud First Policy. It will provide government organizations with a standardized and secure cloud framework hosted within Pakistan.
NTC said keeping public-sector data inside Pakistan can reduce several external risks. These include foreign supply-chain risks, international price changes, and geopolitical challenges. The corporation is also seeking accreditation under the Pakistan Cloud First Policy. Seven applications have been submitted so far, including one from NTC.
The Karachi data center will include AI capabilities linked to Pakistan’s emerging National AI Policy. NTC plans to use a vendor-neutral computing system for these services. The facility will also support locally contextualized large language models (LLMs). This will allow secure AI inference and model deployment for selected public-sector applications.
NTC expects the project to support Pakistan’s local IT industry as well. Government agencies could shift some workloads from costly foreign cloud services to local infrastructure. The data center will use a scalable design, allowing NTC to increase capacity as demand grows. It could support digital services across health, education, finance and industry.
The Karachi facility is therefore more than a regional data center. It forms part of Pakistan’s wider effort to build local digital infrastructure and strengthen control over government data.
